


No Such Thing As Perfect

by RurouniHime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:39:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pansy comes over on Sunday morning to help a hurting friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Such Thing As Perfect

It wasn’t exactly polite of Draco to keep Pansy waiting in his building’s open-air hallway. He could just as easily have unlocked his Floo for her, and then all this idiotic Apparition silliness would have been avoided. But when he opened the door at last, she’d already decided to let certain things go, given his situation.

“You’re early for a Sunday,” Draco said. He led the way into the kitchen.

Pansy chose to ignore the sulky tinge to his voice. The morning sun was just beaming across the wooden floor, making motes of dust sparkle. She heaved a sigh and shrugged her cloak off, then folded it pristinely and draped it over the back of one of the chairs. Draco watched her out of the corner of his eye as he got a tumbler down from the cupboard. “Thirsty?”

“Your hair’s gone round the bend,” she responded. Draco smirked and leaned against the worktop.

“Here’s a shock for you: I don’t give a damn.” He scruffed his fingers deliberately through the tangle atop his head and flashed white teeth her way before pushing off his perch and heading for the refrigerator. Pansy watched him, suddenly fond. The truth was that his hair still fell enticingly around his face, even when he hadn’t tamed it into submission. But he was obviously set on being a prat; she wasn’t going to take that joy away from him. She was his friend, after all.

“Well, I’ve got tuna fish and cold pasta.” Draco stared into the open refrigerator for another second, then shut the door with a shake of his head. “Better to just go hungry.”

“It’s alright, darling, I’ve already eaten.”

“Good. Then you won’t mind if I skip it.”

She took the glass of water he offered, setting it down on the table. “Still in a state, I see.”

“Where the hell else would I be?”

“Three years ago, I would have said, ‘Over it, dearest,’ but now I see I’m behind the times.”

Draco huffed and narrowed his eyes at her. “Did I ask you over at godawful o’clock on a Sunday so you could make me feel worse, then? I’ve forgotten what my exact words were.”

She rolled her eyes. “I do hope you haven’t been skimping on food for an entire two weeks. Going to lose that perfect physique, and then see if I care about your problems.”

“I ate,” he replied sullenly. “I did not go out, though, so you can get that out of your system right now. I didn’t, and I don’t plan to.”

She nodded and took a sip of water. The kitchen looked the same. She had yet to see the living room and the bedroom. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Pansy did not appreciate change as much as she thought she should.

“Call one of your mother’s house-elves to find you more food, or I will,” she threatened. “Your mother and I are on intimate terms and I don’t think she’d appreciate you flopping over dead in your own kitchen.”

“I could care less what she thinks. She can’t disown me again, can she?”

Pansy shook her head. “Words, Draco. You know she hasn’t followed through legally.”

“Well.” He sat down in the chair across from hers. “When she gets her priorities straightened out, maybe she’ll decide I’m moving in the right direction for a change.”

“Stop it.” Pansy glared at her glass. “You’re going maudlin and I just got here.”

“Then leave. It’s the state of my life right now.”

“Oh, no. You wanted to talk. I’m here to listen and, gods forbid, offer advice if I think you’re worth it. You’re not wiggling out of it like you did last week. Millicent is waiting for some sort of closure to her gossip.”

Draco exhaled. “Tell her I’ve cleaned out half my flat. More than half, actually. That should give her enough juice. Fuck, I couldn’t even remember what was mine.”

“Kept the dishes, I see.”

His head twitched as if to shake, but stopped halfway through. “I didn’t buy them.” He leaned forward and rested his face in his hands. He’d definitely grown thinner, she could see it in the way his shoulder muscles flexed beneath the t-shirt he wore. It was light blue and hung loose on his frame, just loose enough to tell her it wasn’t his shirt. He’d probably been wearing it for days and nights. But he didn’t look unclean. Draco never looked unclean, even at his worst moments. It was a skill she envied.

“I wish you were taking better care of yourself,” she muttered, drawing her glass close again and swirling it between her thumb and middle finger. He really was gorgeous, all that golden hair and unblemished skin. There was beauty in tragedy, and Draco had it in spades when he wasn’t showcasing his deft grasp of all things sultry. It was no wonder he could get anything he wanted, and anyone. No wonder he could get himself into situations like this.

“Shut up, Pansy,” he said into his hands, without venom. “I’m allowed to ravage myself this week. I’ve checked the rules.”

“Have you even talked to him?”

“About what?”

She reached over and knocked his arm with her hand. “What the fuck do you mean, about what? I should think it would be obvious to _one_ of you.”

He raised his head to reveal tired eyes and a pressure-reddened face. “Pansy, I can’t even figure out the answers to my own questions. If he even has questions, I could hardly answer them. But he hasn’t got questions, I assure you.”

“Merlin’s twisted knickers,” she breathed. “You are ridiculous, and I’m ashamed to call you my friend.”

“A little more convincing next time, Parkinson.” His head had dropped back into his hands, muffling his voice. His shoulders rose and fell in a deep sigh. “Fuck. I can’t even figure out why I did it in the first place. So. Conversation unnecessary.”

“Draco, there must have been some reason you did it.” She steeled herself. Romance, while nice, was never as easy or as convenient as all those imbecilic books purported it to be. She could attest to that personally. “We just need to think about it. Figure out why. Somewhere there’s a reason, and maybe… Well, maybe this is for the best anyway.”

Draco lifted his head and rolled his eyes at her. The ache in his entire frame was obvious. “How the fuck was hurting him ‘for the best’?”

“You need to know why you did it,’ she snapped. “If you ever hope to explain it to him.”

He looked as though he might actually kill her. “And what makes you think I care to explain it to him? Maybe I’m glad I did it.”

“Yes, that’s why you’re starving yourself in your flat and wearing his clothing.”

She did almost fear for her life when he looked at her again. But it was no contest; he was in no shape to stand against her wand. She matched him smile for glare. “So. Did you sneak that shirt away from his bags and boxes, or was it a gift?”

Draco slumped bodily in his chair. “He never bothered to get his shirts out of the dresser,” he mumbled.

They still smelled like Potter, she supposed. And she could give the man that: Potter had always smelled rather good. Enticing. Draco sucked it up like oxygen. There were times when _Draco_ had even smelled liked Potter, and that, more than anything, had made Pansy jealous. Their closeness, their physicality, was visceral. It always had been, and up until two weeks ago, she’d thought it always would be, despite her snidest comments.

It was both painful and glorious when you knew just from looking at a couple that the sex was brilliant. Beyond brilliant. Beyond words.

Alas.

“Well, alright then.” She cleared her throat primly and nudged the tumbler away. Better not to be distracted while she set about untangling the impossibility that was Draco Malfoy. She’d had distractions before and they never tended to bode well for winning any sort of argument with him. “What _did_ he take?”

Draco told the table more than he told her. “Towel or two. Half the pictures on the dresser. All his coats. Fuck. He took his coats.”

“You can hardly blame him for that. It’s November.”

Draco waved it away with a listless hand. “Everything he ever added to the bathroom. Which was technically insubstantial, I suppose.”

It certainly didn’t sound insubstantial. Pansy wondered if Draco physically missed the sight of Potter’s horrendous Muggle floss on his lovely black sink-counter combination.

“Hasn’t bothered to loot the bookcase yet.”

Pansy smiled and sat back. “Well. There you have it. He hasn’t told Granger, else she would have insisted he rescue the _tomes_ from _degradation_.” Gods, it felt really good to get all melodramatic about Granger again. It had been years since she’d managed a good round of it.

But Draco only shrugged. Pansy leaned forward, knitting her brows.

“For Salazar’s sake, Draco. He didn’t take his books. Alright? Can’t be over so simply, can it?”

“He might not agree.”

“Well, I say spell them to the bookshelf. That way you at least have to argue about it when he comes over to get them.”

Draco pushed up from the table with a scrape of his chair. Pansy jumped, then watched as he went over to the sink and stared down into it, leaning on both hands. Eventually his voice made it back to her ears. “He hasn’t come by in sixteen days, Panse. Hasn’t Owled.”

Pansy weighed her words for a moment, and then thought, _to hell with it._ “Forgive me if I choose not to share your pessimistic outlook on the situation. How in the world can he come by when you’ve locked up the wards and the Floo? Unless… Well, of course, you haven’t changed them. You’re not an imbecile.”

“Only on that front,” was his caustic reply.

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Draco, stop it. Stop taking the sins of every person who ever lived on this earth onto your shoulders! You are allowed a mistake now and again, you know that, yes? Yes?”

He didn’t answer; only shook his head. She could tell he’d closed his eyes.

“Alright, I’m going to risk your eternal and fiery wrath, and tell you that I’m already tired of beating around the bush.” She raised her eyebrows, and he turned to face her, leaning back against the counter. There was a distinct and strange wariness in his eyes, and it almost made her stop: she couldn’t remember Draco looking scared in quite that way. “Tell me about him. The other one. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“Looked,” Draco snapped. “Past tense.”

“So it wasn’t the beginning of a possible relationship.”

Draco’s face twisted into a glare so furious that Pansy raised her hands. “ _Alright._ ” she said. “Calm down. A one-off, then. Two-off?”

“One.” Very clipped.

“Well. That’s something, at least. More than that would have looked a lot worse.”

“Oh, how do you figure?” Sarcasm layered thickly across the words. Pansy glowered at Draco.

“Believe it or not, there is a difference between a protracted affair and a one-night-stand. All things being equal.”

He looked very weary, but waved her on.

“So,” she hedged. “So. Younger or older?”

“No fucking clue.”

Good, good. “His face? His hair?”

Draco looked as if he wouldn’t answer. But then— “Square jaw. Dark hair. I… don’t remember the eyes.”

“Did you choose him because he looked” –look _ed_ — “like Harry?”

He shrugged. “Probably.”

Well, now he was drifting into leadenness. She could not have that. She knew him; she knew how hard it was to drag him out once he was in. Time to change directions just a bit. “Were you and Harry having a row?”

That livened him up a little. She suspected it had everything to do with the mention of Potter. “Yes. No. We weren’t… fighting, as such. But we…” He grimaced. “We were never not having some sort of row.”

Intriguing. She couldn’t remember them looking less than content when in the presence of others. But she’d return to that later. “I’ll allow you the past tense in terms of your night-long shag, Draco. You can drop it for Potter, though.”

He looked as if he might spit, but ended up saying nothing. Served him right; she did not deal in fatalism. Things were only over once they were incontrovertibly proven to be so. Otherwise there was room for adjustment. “I’m assuming a club was involved, or a bar or some such horrid little place. Did you bring him here?”

 _“No,”_ he snapped. “Fuck.”

“Yes, exactly. But where? And please, if you remained in whatever dingy shithole you found him in, spare me any details. ‘A wall’ will do fine.”

This time he sneered at her. “His flat. No walls involved.”

Pansy nodded. The tightness in her chest was loosening. He was talking at least. It was more than she could say for the last two weeks. “If I know you, he was good-looking. And if I know Potter, he was _very_ good-looking.”

“Congratulations. You know us both so well.”

Pansy pursed her lips. “Look, Draco, I’m trying to get a feel for what happened. Your problem, might I remind you? Which is obviously causing you pain. And you aren’t exactly giving me much to work with.”

He grumbled something and came back to his chair. He sat down again and wove his fingers together atop the table. He was an odd study in dejection and tension. Pansy marveled at it just long enough to realise that she was avoiding the next stage of their conversation, too. “Vengeance, Draco?”

He shook his head.

“Because he was hot?”

Draco exhaled and glared at her.

“Were you drunk?”

This time the look on his face could have sliced right through her.

Pansy couldn’t help herself; she sighed loudly and leaned forward. “You weren’t doing it because Potter did something, and it wasn’t the man’s incredible body, and you weren’t inebriated— Why even bother? You went back to his flat, you had sex with him. Salazar, did you enjoy anything about it? Or was this even more useless than it already—”

“It felt bloody good, alright?” Draco exploded. He slumped back into his chair. “He was even bigger than Harry, and that’s… saying something.”

“Did you do it because he was bigger than Harry?” Pansy ventured.

“Of course not.” Draco snorted, a look of disgust on his face. “I didn’t even know it when I walked—” He stopped, blinked, and when he continued, his voice was softer. “Walked into his room.”

Pansy folded her hands in her lap. It helped that she was curious herself, but she still knew she didn’t like asking these things. Old wounds never really healed, it seemed. “How long were you there?”

Something twitched across Draco’s features. He didn’t look at her. “Barely half an hour.”

“You didn’t stay, then?” She frowned at him. He frowned right back.

“Fuck’s sake. I wasn’t exactly there for the intellectual company, Pansy.” His cheeks were fast losing their pale shade.

“Well.” Pansy tapped her fingers on the armrest of her chair. “That’s something. At the very least.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Oh, and how is that something? It doesn’t negate the fact that I had his cock shoved up my arse. That I bloody well loved it. Sure, Potter, no big deal, I didn’t fucking stay the night. Can’t we just carry on?”

“If you’re in a mood, it’s your own fault,” she said snidely. Draco glowered to himself. Something about it tugged at her attention. “Alright. What exactly did you do, then?”

Draco shrugged. He still wasn’t looking at her. “I let him fuck me.”

“In a bed?”

Now he scowled at her properly. “What is this, feeding your need to live vicariously?”

Pansy rolled her eyes again; she was better at it than he was anyway, she might as well show it off. “Draco, a bed is far more intimate. Was it a bed or a couch? Or the floor?”

Well. She hadn’t taken Draco for a blusher. This was certainly an informative meeting, in more than one way. “It was his bed,” Draco answered quietly. He gestured into the ensuing silence. “There wasn’t… really anywhere else.”

She resisted the urge to berate him. He was right anyway. It didn’t really matter where the indiscretion had taken place. One always thought it did, until one was actually faced with the results. She supposed that might have to do with the length of the infidelity as well, actually, but that one still felt… important. She thought it was, at least. Pansy drew a breath and returned to her original tack. “And you enjoyed it. It felt good.”

Draco snorted. He got up, yanked a cupboard open and grabbed down a mug, slapping it onto the counter so hard she thought it would shatter. “Only for about ten minutes. Then I remembered my lover and realised I was fucked sideways. Tea?”

“Did Harry find out right away?” she asked. Draco didn’t answer for several seconds. He just looked down at the empty mug.

“A few days,” he said at last. “He’s rather intuitive, believe it or not.”

“Oh, I don’t,” she said, and he turned on her.

“I don’t know how he knew, alright? Maybe I was acting strange. Maybe he smelled the bastard on me. Maybe I talk in my sleep!”

She raised her hand, uneasy. “Calm down. I’m sorry.” She waited until the trembling in his shoulders had subsided, and then tried to focus the conversation again. “Did you sleep together again before he figured it out? You and Harry.”

Draco shook his head disdainfully. “How is that any of your business?”

“I’m curious. And you’re still not very forthcoming.”

“Well, live with it,” he snapped.

She didn’t want to. She wanted to know if Draco had made love to Harry in their bed during the scant few nights of peace he had left— if he’d ever had peace to begin with. If he’d tried to cleanse himself through his lover. Tried to put it all behind him.

Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

She shook herself free of the pathetically morose turn her thoughts were trying to take. “Alright, so maybe it was a lack of proper release,” she offered blithely. He turned and stared at her incredulously. She shrugged. “Potter’s gone an awful lot, you’ve said it time and again.”

He sneered. “I’ve got two hands every night of my life, even the nights Harry’s not here.”

“Lovely, Draco.” Pansy sniffed.

“Come off it. You want to know the inner me? This is part of it, and it _doesn’t_ gross you out.”

She flashed him a sharp grin. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

“You’d be a damned hypocrite if you said it did.” He knocked the faucet on with a smack of his hand and filled the mug with water.

“Alas, we’re not talking about our charming school adventures, Draco,” she sing-songed. His lips nearly curved into a smile. Very nearly. “Besides. You never did more than feel me up.”

“Selective memory, Pansy?”

“No,” she snipped. “I’d just rather ignore those stupid wanking sessions.”

“Oh, if only.”

She grinned at him, and he did smile back at her this time. But it was doomed to fade, she knew that. Rehashing adolescent innocence lost did nothing to the current mess Draco was in. It smothered her levity so quickly her stomach flip-flopped. She sighed, upset with herself for pretending she’d helped him solve anything.

Draco was an adult. Gods, was he ever. He was a beautiful, sexual, grieving adult on the cusp of the harshest disappointment he’d had in the last five years. Potter was the one in his bed nowadays, in his thoughts, and in _him_ , if she were plain enough. The thought that he might be losing so very much all in the space of two weeks was enough to close her throat. Send her shoulders shaking.

No. No, this was about him. Not her. By all the Founders, she was going to keep it that way, and Pansy did not renege on deals with herself.

Still, she couldn’t push out the judgment that he’d done this to himself.

“Were you lonely?” she finally asked.

Draco turned his head from where he had been gazing at the wall. His eyes tracked over her face.

“Yes,” he murmured. She nodded, encouraging him, and he hunched his shoulders and looked away again. “He’s always bloody gone.”

“Is that why?”

Draco swivelled his head so fast it startled her. “Fuck if it is. It’s a piss-poor excuse.”

“I don’t know. You’ve always liked sex. And often. If he’s not there to provide, why not go out and—”

“That’s not why!” Draco snarled. He clapped his hands to his forehead and turned away from her yet again. “Fucking hell. I’m a person, not a damned satyr.”

“It disgusts you,” she said, frankly surprised. Of all reasons, she’d thought that the sex itself might be up there on the list. Potter was certainly gone often enough.

“You know what? I am not having this conversation with you.” Draco pushed up, past her chair to the stove, and flicked his fingers. The kettle sputtered to life and almost immediately began shrieking. But Draco didn’t turn it off. He just stood there with one hand pressed over his forehead. Eyes closed. Pansy waited for him to gather himself.

As it turned out, that took nearly thirty seconds of a screaming kettle, a plundering of a disturbingly empty cupboard for one of three boxes of tea, and then an efficient pouring of scalding water over teabag. Draco didn’t bother with his customary sugar, only taking the darkening tea back to the table and sitting himself down with it in front of him. But he didn’t touch it. He just stared at it hatefully. It made Pansy wonder if it was Potter’s mug. Or Potter’s tea.

“He cleaned out these cupboards, did he?” she asked. Draco’s eyes flickered but never far enough to abandon the mug.

“Took some food. That’s all.”

She was midway through raising her own glass and promptly set it down with a thunk. “He took your _food?_ For Salazar’s sake, Draco—”

“Oh, shut it, Pansy. We’ve never been keen on filling our cupboards, you’re damn well aware of that.”

“So he took your biscuits.”

Draco’s face twisted. He jerked the mug toward him, almost violently enough to send the liquid burning its way over his hand, and took a sip. If it was too hot, he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Or enjoyed being punished. Pansy shrugged. “Where is he, then, that he needs all your precious digestives?”

“Inn on Diagon. Or some such wherever.”

“For two weeks?” she exclaimed.

“Sixteen days,” Draco corrected, taking a more measured sip. Pansy opened her mouth to ask after a specific location, but Draco cut her off. “I didn’t ask.”

“And he didn’t tell you,” she finished for him relentlessly.

“Cheers, Pansy, for being the one true spark of normalcy that I can still rely on. Has anyone ever attempted to force delicacy into your brain?”

“Oh, they’ve all been hexed,” she answered neatly. Draco’s lips quirked for an ephemeral instant.

“He hasn’t even tried to contact me,” her friend whispered, staring down at the mug that he was turning inexorably with the fingers of his left hand. Pansy looked at her half-full glass of water for a second.

“You have to give him time.”

“I can’t do that,” Draco shot back. He peered at her earnestly. “I mean, what does one do with time? Mightn’t he go out and shag some other bloke while I sit here?”

 _“Yes,”_ she snapped. Draco blinked at her. She hated to see his face so slack. It only happened in the instant after she’d hurt him. Before the anger reared up to cover it. Pansy let her breath out. “Yes, he might do that. Could you blame him?”

“No.” Draco swallowed. Looked down at his hands.

Suddenly she was curious again. About the look on his face, perhaps, or that certain slant to his shoulders. “Do you think you could stop him?”

“I can damn well try,” Draco hissed. The fire had at last arrived in his eyes.

“Draco.” She grabbed his wrist. He stared at her, half out of his chair already, and she tugged him back into it. “You can’t stop him. Don’t be obtuse. If he’s going to do it, he’ll do it, in spite of— no, _because_ you tried to stop him. If he’s still Harry Potter.”

“I don’t believe this.” Draco wrenched his arm away from her and rose, fury written all over him.

Bugger it to hell and back. It wasn’t coming out as she’d intended. “Draco, you wounded his pride! For fuck’s sake.” Pansy smacked her glass down on the table, and the bang had the result she’d hoped for: Draco drew up short, looking at her accusingly. But she knew she was right. “You shagged another bloke, and you hurt him, but you also embarrassed him. He’s Harry Potter, he’s not a bloody pushover! He’s an idiotic arse, I still hold to that, but even a stupid Hufflepuff could tell you that he’d never just wallow in it. He’s got a fucking temper!”

Draco’s face had gone pale. His chin shivered as he tightened his jaw. “So what are you saying?” His voice was just this side of shaking. “That it’s hopeless?”

“I’m saying that you’d better get used to the idea. Even if he doesn’t do it, you’d better get used to the idea that he might be with another man before you two come out of this, in another man’s bed, with his cock up another man’s arse, kissing _another man._ ”

Draco shook his head, a tiny spasm, but Pansy didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Draco, you had better imagine him doing whatever you did, and you had better come to terms with it. The last thing you want is to be blindsided with it when you talk to him again!”

He stared at her, open for the first time, and she found she didn’t like it. She didn’t like seeing him so unravelled. So wounded. And it didn’t help that half of her thought he deserved to be wounded. She looked away, not wanting to force the wound wider, even if he’d inflicted it on himself. But it was the logical way to make him see.

“If the idea of him with someone else makes you sick, think how he feels,” she finished quietly.

All she could hear was his breathing for a long time. Then he sat back in his chair.

“Some pep talk,” he muttered.

The words _I’m not here to give you a pep talk_ flew through her head. Pansy bit her lip. Wasn’t she, though? Wasn’t she here to help him figure out what to do?

Draco heaved a sigh, and it somehow was not self-deprecating at all. Rather… empty, instead. “Well. Continue.”

She was caught in the image of Potter stalking his way into another home and another bed. It wouldn’t be out of lust or attraction, that much she knew. It would be sex with Draco, but through another’s body. It would be rage and satisfaction, neatly hemmed in the sorrow of seeing the wrong face when he opened his eyes and looked down at his partner.

Pansy shook herself. She wasn’t sure if Potter would actually do that. Because she also knew that the idea, while so very sound in the mind, was too much like death when one tried to follow through.

Time to play to Draco’s strengths. He had many of them, that was still the truth. She knew Draco was strongest when he had something to fight for. He was the most focussed then. And he’d already made it clear that he had something worth fighting for, hadn’t he?

“Have you begged him properly yet?” she joked.

“Not well enough,” Draco replied distantly. He stared with a haunted expression at the wall.

“Oh, Draco.”

He swung his head to face her, and her heart thumped up into her throat. “Don’t look at me like that, Panse,” he whispered.

“Draco, obviously there’s something missing between you and Potter. Otherwise— No, now who’s looking at who? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have cheated on him. There was something you were looking for, and he didn’t give it to you, and frankly, I don’t know if I blame you for trying to fill the void, whatever it was.”

“Oh, please, Pansy—”

“No, it had to have been big. I know you. You don’t fuck around normally, so there was something you weren’t getting. Have you ever considered that, as pants as this whole situation turned out, it might be a necessary evil?”

He stared at her as if he intended to burn holes right through her. She set her jaw. “Oh, yes, I’m the one being a prick now. Well, I don’t give a fuck. Draco, just turn around and face it! Face the fact that something wasn’t right. In retrospect, you might learn something.”

“What’s the point of looking at it in retrospect?” he asked listlessly. “In retrospect, everything I’ve done has been wrong.”

“Yes, I’d second that,” she stated. “You moved in with him too fast. You did everything too fast, even sex, and for you, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

Draco’s eyes flashed. “We did not do everything too fast!” he hissed. There was something new in his face this time. He stood up from his chair. “Gods, you never— You don’t know anything about it, you never did, and you _still_ think you do!”

“Well, what was I supposed to think?” she fired back. “One minute you’re finally speaking cordially to each other, and the next you’ve moved into a flat together and are shagging like Nifflers! Please, try to tell me you didn’t see this coming!”

He sagged, covered his face with his hand. “Alright. The moving in… That was too fast. But not the sex.” He pointed a long finger at her, and she believed him.

“Fine. Not the sex.”

“We _were_ ready, Panse,” he continued. “I’ve never wanted anyone that much in my whole damn life. Hell, we’d basically had a decade of foreplay as it was! It wasn’t awkward, it wasn’t ridiculous. It just was. He’s… You can’t resist him.”

She huffed softly. “Anyone who valued their life could find a way, once _you_ were in the picture.”

He just shook his head.

That stung, most definitely. Pansy frowned down at the table, finding herself at the end of a bramble-covered path and unable to spot a way through the tangle. She’d counted on his caustic humour. But how could she not have expected to find its death in this flat, in this kitchen, wrapped up in Potter’s clothes and drinking Potter’s tea? She wondered if the bed still smelled like Harry, and if sleeping in that bed was doing Draco more harm than good now that the rest of it was empty.

The worst part was that she had been more than a sodding Hufflepuff, she’d been a fool, and now she didn’t have a contingency plan for how to talk to him in this state. She knew how to talk to Draco Malfoy. But not this Draco Malfoy.

 _And how would you have been talked to?_ her sinister brain tossed at her. Pansy straightened up, and the traitorous memories slipped off her with a little effort.

“Was it a fight, Draco?” she said softly. “Were you angry with him?”

“No.”

She didn’t believe it this time. Wherever this anger was coming from, it wasn’t directed at her, and she was beginning to realise that, even though it was directed inward today, it had not been initially. Very curious.

“It’s alright if you were, you know,” she murmured. His eyes caught hers and flicked away immediately. She tilted her head. “People get in fights all the time. You and Potter spent half your adolescence furious at each other.”

His body twitched. “Not about that.”

“Then what?”

“Look, I was just pissed off at him. I’m always pissed off at him. I don’t even know why—” His shoulders heaved. He looked at the wall over her head. Spoke in a very low voice. “I just wanted to hurt him.”

“Alright,” she answered after a moment’s silence. “Why?”

“He’s never… here.” It had a forlorn knell. Draco wasn’t looking at her. His fingers had frozen touching his chin. Pansy pondered for all of three seconds and frowned.

“He’s never at home?”

Draco’s frame wilted. “No. He’s never _here_.” He shut his eyes and shook his head hard. “Merlin, I can’t possibly explain it to you.”

“Try,” she gritted out, unable to help herself.

Draco scowled at her.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else, ever, Pansy.” He waved her off the instant she began to point out the obvious. “No, no, not in bed, fuck, don’t you see that’s beside the point? It doesn’t matter! Salazar, Pansy, I could sleep with anyone. Any time! But I can’t _be_ with anyone. And if—” He cut himself off so abruptly, clamped down so obviously, that Pansy sat forward. He wasn’t getting off that easily.

“If what?” As she expected, he remained stubbornly silent. “Draco, if _what?_ ”

“He could just leave, at any time,” was all she heard, a weak rush of words as he studied the tile floor.

“What?” She blinked. “Leave?”

“Yes,” he snarled. He was switching between moods so fast she just knew the end was coming. The final, ultimate explosion. He was very close. Each time he tacked away and swung back, sailing nearer and nearer to it, but then turned at the last moment as if he didn’t want to face it.

Or couldn’t face it.

Maybe she could trick it out of him. It was a low thing to do, but she was out of options and he would ultimately understand. And thank her for it. He was bloody well poisoning himself and she knew… she knew about that better than most.

“I take it back,” she said. “Do not tell your mother about this. She’ll die of shock that she got her way.”

“Tell my mother? Fucking hell, I can’t even have a conversation with my mother without her demonising the life I’m living!”

She hadn’t expected so much fire from this particular source, and had to collect herself. “And… you don’t—”

“No, that’s just it, I don’t give a shit what she thinks! I could care _less_. That’s… It’s not…”

It crept upon her abruptly and stole away again. She’d almost had it. Merlin’s sodden, _fucking sodden_ knickers. “Well… What did you mean by him not being here, then?”

“He’s not, Pansy.” Draco fought something down. “He’s not with me. He’s still with them.”

“With… them.”

Draco’s eyes looked rather dead. “You know what they say about me? The same things Blaise used to say about him. He’s not worth it, he’s too different. I won’t make him happy, and they’re obviously right.”

Anger rose fast. “Who says that?”

“The Weasleys,” he forced out. “Sometimes Granger, though she’s not as vitriolic.”

“Wait. He doesn’t tell them to fuck off?” she asked, indignant.

“Oh, he tells them to fuck off.” There was still no life in his expression. “Just like I tell all of you to fuck off.”

“As you should,” Pansy said, nodding.

He laughed then, and it wasn’t pretty. It was as empty as his eyes. “He might as well take their advice. They were right anyway.”

And here they were, back again. Pansy sighed. “Draco, you made a mistake—”

He spun to face her. “Fucking hell, Pansy, I’m not talking about what I did! I’m talking about why I did it, don’t you listen?”

“I…”

“You don’t get it. I don’t even think he gets it.” His expression took on an ugly twist. “I need him and he doesn’t…”

“He doesn’t get it.”

“No, Pansy,” Draco hissed. “He doesn’t need me.”

She stared at him.

Draco loomed over her, breathing hard, looking so broken that, for all his fire, he might have dropped where he stood. “I can see it in his face, Pansy. Every time I look at him. Every time we kiss, every time he fucks me— Every time we go anywhere, there’s this wall between us, and I could blame it on his friends, I have. But the fact is, he’s built it himself and there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing! It’s like he’s already decided, he’s already reached the top of his mountain, and it’s so far below mine—” Draco’s eyes glimmered. “Everything I try just gets absorbed, put away somewhere behind that wall, and it takes everything I have, all of me. He only gives me half of it back, and that’s fucking it!”

“Draco, why didn’t you just tell him you’re in love with him?”

“Because he’s not in love with me! Not like that.” He plowed right through any answer she might have given. “Don’t give me any of your romantic happy ending bullshit, it’s not real life. Maybe he would have eventually fallen that deeply for me, but I’m already there! I’m _there_ , Pansy! I need him, I need— Do you know what it’s like to feel like you’re half gone when someone’s not standing next to you? Like part of you is missing? It’s stupid, but it’s my reality, and I never, ever thought that he’d be the one I— But he is, somehow he _is_. And now, who knows if it ever would have happened?”

“He cares about you, Draco, otherwise he wouldn’t have got so angry! Don’t you see that?”

“He _cares_ for me? He— Pansy, he’s the love of my fucking life!” Draco shouted and stalked across the kitchen like a caged animal. “Oh, but I’m not the love of _his_ fucking life, oh no. And I _hate_ him for that. I hate him so much because I’m a pathetic fool and I’m in love with him, but like I always manage to do, I’ve gone and bollocksed it up completely! Oh hell.” Draco slumped down where he stood, which happened, luckily, to be over his chair, and there he hung his head and pressed his fingers into his eyes. “Oh hell, Pansy… Look what I’ve done.”

For once, she didn’t have anything to say. She tried, but there were absolutely no words. None.

“I just wanted to hurt him,” Draco mumbled. She could hear the helplessness. “Like he hurts me.”

The silence fell over them again. Pansy exhaled. “Well, fuck.”

Draco trembled, curled in on himself there at the table. The magnitude of feeling that was encased in that body was almost an ache in Pansy’s lungs. Nothing sweet about it, just a rending, tearing need to be with another person, to be loved by Harry Potter. Pansy chewed her lip and let the nervousness wash over her. She, they, were too small for this. It was dangerous, what was inside Draco. It had been denied, and he’d turned on it, used it like a weapon. Wounded both of them with it, perhaps permanently. And it was not gone. It remained to fester and sear and remind him of what he was now without. He was so in love with Harry Potter it was frightening.

He reminded her of herself. And if this went the way her situation had—

She didn’t really know any way out. Maybe that was because there shouldn’t have been a way out, right from the very beginning. Maybe this sort of mistake was never to be corrected, never to be atoned for. Not properly, anyway.

Never, ever laid to rest completely.

She didn’t know if she was the one who could help him to give it a good try anyway. Didn’t know if she was strong enough, or knowledgeable enough. Perhaps every single bit of advice she gave him would only mire Draco and Harry deeper. Until they were as deep in the muck as she was.

And then Pansy Parkinson asserted herself again; Draco’s agony was a physical pain in her chest. She could not just sit by and let him drown.

“You have to tell him this,” she said.

“Oh, yes, that’ll go over splendidly,” Draco growled. “Yes, Potter, I fucked another man because I love you, please understand, but you infuriate me so much because you don’t love me like that. Oh, that will be fabulous.”

“Do you want me to tell him?” she offered, already not relishing the idea, already worrying over the multitudinous ways she could get it wrong. Wondering why it was her duty to get blasted backwards out the door by that lummox Potter, for Draco’s sake.

But Draco shook his head. Didn’t even look at her. “No,” he whispered. “My problem. I’ll handle it.”

“Yes, you’ve been handling it spectacularly so far,” she stated. Draco glared at her. Pansy rolled her eyes. “Look, Draco. Do you want him back?”

Draco didn’t answer. Oh well, Pansy knew a yes when she saw it. Underneath all the stupid boy behavior. “You simply have to try,” she coaxed. Wasn’t all that used to coaxing; it was far too considerate an activity. “If you don’t, you’ll just go on fucking men to fill the void, but you’ll never _be_ with another man except Potter for the rest of your life. You know I’m right.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Draco said softly. “I’ve gone too far.”

“Maybe he should decide that.”

Draco looked at her. “Would _you_ forgive me?”

That caught her off-guard. For two weeks she’d been trying to keep it all out, ever since Draco told her what he’d done, but now an image of Theodore finally succeeded in filling her mind, and with it, a lingering tendril of hatred. Disgust. Betrayal.

Need.

She thought about lying. But this was Draco. “No,” she murmured.

His eyes flickered. But he had already looked resigned anyway. “Why not?”

It exploded out of her, sudden as a flash-fire and bearing all of its heat. “Because you fucked another person, Draco, that’s why! Gods, you— You were trusted. And you did it anyway! As if your lover didn’t even matter. It wasn’t enough just to look, or to think about doing it, you had another person’s cock inside your body, you had your tongue inside another person’s mouth, and— Fucking hell, you were supposed to faithful, and it doesn’t matter how repentant you are, it’s done! It’s _been_ done! You, your body— They were only supposed to be for your lover, but now it’s done and it’s known, and there’s no way to un-know it!”

The room was deafeningly quiet as she struggled with herself. Theodore’s dark hair and slender face and perfect hands filled her mind, and the taint came along with it, the knowledge that his hands had climbed over a body that was not hers, breasts and hips that were not hers, a face and eyelashes, a taste that wasn’t hers. His pain afterward had been dreadful, as dreadful as this. As Draco’s. She had seen it for what it was. But she hadn’t been able to look at their bed without knowing. Without seeing. Without hating.

“ _Because_ , Draco.” She took a deep breath and drew it out slowly, like a blade from a bleeding wound. Which was what it was, actually.

He nodded. His smile was small, sad, ultimately lost.

She wanted to tell him that the rest did not die so easily. That there was still love locked behind the fury and the repulsion and the impotence. It couldn’t flee when the bars were still chained shut over it. But it hurt too deeply. It took her much too long to collect her thoughts and shutter them away where they could not sting and stab any longer. She reached for her glass and drained it of its remaining contents in one quick swallow, wishing it was alcohol.

Gods, she wanted Potter not to be like her in this regard at least. For Draco’s sake. She wanted him to forgive. Pansy took another deep breath and looked up, nearly giving it voice, wondering if that would be enough after the first strike. Draco was watching her silently.

 _You must hate me,_ his eyes said. Pansy fidgeted primly, feeling the atrocious blush colouring her cheeks. “Alright, so maybe I’m a little bit infuriated with you, Draco.”

Draco gave a weak chuckle that died instantly. But her own words cleaned out what was left of the heavy knot in her chest and throat. She found it easier to speak the second time she opened her mouth. “It doesn’t mean… I’m not ready to forgive him. Not yet.”

Two years, and she still wasn’t ready to forgive and forget.

She felt Draco’s nod. He didn’t make any move to touch her, and her heart gave a pang at the idea that he might think she didn’t want him to touch her. She cleared her throat and made the turn she’d meant to make a while back, watching the tangled mess fade behind with relief. “But if anyone might forgive you, Potter would.”

“Why?”

Pansy snorted. “Because he’s a bloody imbecile.” She smirked to herself, but when she looked at Draco to share the attempt at humour, she found his face falling apart, eyes open and far too unguarded. As if he were seeing his future. And he was looking right at her.

She hastened off her chair, knelt down in front of him, and took his hands in hers. They shook; she wanted to cover them from sight, guard them from the rest of the world so they could shake in privacy. She looked him right in the eye. “You are going to try. Alright? You will.”

He nodded and this time when she gave him a smile, he returned it.

“Because I can’t stand your belly-aching for the rest of our lives.”

The sound he made was somewhere precariously between a laugh and a sob. She took his face in her hands.

“Oh gods. Next time, just Floo me, Draco, and let _me_ beat sense into Potter’s thick head about how much he should love you.”

He nodded, but she could see the fragility. She stroked his forehead with her thumb. “And don’t say anything about no next times. I’ve been looking for a chance to bite Potter’s arse off for years.”

Draco smiled faintly. “Not the arse, Panse. An ear. Maybe.”

She snickered. Took up his hand again and squeezed his fingers. “It’s not over as easily as all this. Draco, it’s not going to end so quickly. I know. And you two…” She kept his gaze. “You really are perfect for each other.”

“How can I be perfect for him when I’d do this to him?” Draco muttered.

Pansy sighed. “I have no idea. Maybe there’s no such thing as perfect, not really.”

~fin~


End file.
